changing timing of vocals for a remix

[kebabman]

Hi there

I'm doing a remix for a pop band and turning it into a house mix.

I've not really done much of this before....

They sent me all the stems through. The original track was 134 bpm and the first thing I did was set the bpm in Live to 128bpm. I imported all the stems and it doesn't line up at all. It's really the vocals I want to use (3 tracks) and I may well ditch the rest of the stems. I've also loaded the original song into live and it plays okay at 128bpm which is the tempo I want. The 3 vocal parts seem all over the place....they don't line up at the start etc. I've tried manually lining them up with the original full version but I'm really struggling.

Do I need to set warping to complex pro? Do I need to click on the first warp marker and choose warp from here? I also notive that on all the stems the bpms are different. Some are 90, some are as high as 140. Should the bpms for all the stems be 128bpm. In the warp menu there's a section where you can type in the bpm for each sample but it still all seems out.

I really thought this would be straightforward and I'd be able to get a vocal stem syncing for the entire 4 minute song before I started chopping things up and processing.

Any help be really appreciated.

Many thanks

[Tarekith]

I would set the project to 134 first and get all the stems warped properly, THEN try to change the tempo to what you want it to be. Trying to warp just vocal tracks can be challenging, that at least should help a little.

[kebabman]

Hi Tarekith

Thank you for getting back to me - hope you're okay.

This sounds like it might work! Booting up Live now.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Many thanks

[kebabman]

Hi Tarekith

Thank you! This works!

Yes I've put the original tempo in dropped a vocal in which is saying 162bpm (rather than the 134 it should be). I'm then choosing complex pro and then clicking on the very first warp marker and choosing "warp 134bpm from here". this sets the drop down bpm box to 134 in the warp menu. Sure I'm then moving the file along to sync to master file but not big deal.

Thank you so much - you've said me hours of work!

What I don't get though is why I had to do this in the first place? The drums stems all showed 134 bpm (or close enough: 133.96!) Why were the vocal bpms so wayward? Is it because of the nature of vocals with all the dynamics etc, Ableton struggles to detect their tempo?

thank you so much - the remix is coming along very nicely and I'm thinking about different mixes with different tempos.

Thank you

[Tarekith]

I can't say for sure, but likely it's as you said, the vocals just have less time locked transients.

[kebabman]

I was going to use the word transients but you beat me to it!

Thank you as ever for all your help through the years!

cheers

Steve